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- Technology
- March 7, 2024
- 78 views
A new technique to work out a corpse’s time of death
In fiction, hard-pressed pathologists presented with a corpse are able to take a bite of their sandwich and instantly pronounce a time of death. Reality is, of course, a lot…
- Technology
- March 7, 2024
- 40 views
How medical gloves will help launch satellites
GRAPHENE is strong, lightweight, flexible and an excellent conductor of electricity. In the 20 years since it was first isolated at the University of Manchester, however, it has also proved…
- Technology
- March 6, 2024
- 58 views
Scientists can help fetuses by growing tiny replicas of their organs
WHEN A FETUS shows signs of trouble in the womb, doctors face a precarious task. They must find out what is wrong and how to help without jeopardising the pregnancy.…
- Technology
- February 29, 2024
- 75 views
A variety of new batteries are coming to power EVs
The tall grey buildings covering an industrial complex at Nysa, in south-west Poland, look like a modern car factory has been teleported into the surrounding farmland. The plant, though, does…
- Technology
- February 22, 2024
- 82 views
Radio telescopes could spot asteroids with unprecedented detail
Astronomy is a passive science. Its practitioners usually earn their livings studying what they are given: light and other forms of radiation emitted by stars and nebulae, sometimes after it…
- Technology
- February 22, 2024
- 67 views
The challenges of steering a hypersonic plane
Mach 5 is the new Mach 1. Just as aviators of old sought to break the sound barrier and travel supersonically, the search is now on for reliable and controllable…
- Technology
- February 21, 2024
- 77 views
New treatments are emerging for type-1 diabetes
“WHERE ARE the islets of Langerhans?” is a trick question that pops up from time to time in quizzes. The answer is to be found not in atlases of geography,…
- Technology
- February 14, 2024
- 60 views
A private Moon mission hopes to succeed where others have failed
LANDING ON THE Moon is difficult. Of the five robotic landers that have made the attempt in the past year, two succeeded and three failed. Both successful landers were sent…
- Technology
- February 12, 2024
- 72 views
A new treatment for Alzheimer’s offers hope—but raises questions, too
FOR DECADES the search for a drug to treat Alzheimer’s disease had seemed a costly wild-goose chase. Then, in 2021, a drug called aducanumab received regulatory approval in America. A second,…
- Technology
- February 10, 2024
- 61 views
A 40-year-old nuclear fusion experiment bows out in style
THE HORSE archers of ancient Iran had a trick known as the Parthian shot. When retreating after a charge they were able to twist their bodies around in the saddle…
- Technology
- February 8, 2024
- 51 views
Scientists have trained an AI through the eyes of a baby
For decades linguists have argued over how children learn language. Some think that babies are born as “blank slates” who pick up language simply from experience—hearing, seeing and playing with…
- Technology
- February 8, 2024
- 60 views
The first endometriosis drug in four decades is on the horizon
In 1690 Daniel Schrön, a German physician, described a patient with “ulcers” throughout her peritoneum, bladder, intestines, uterus and cervix. It was long thought to be the first documented appearance…
- Technology
- February 7, 2024
- 73 views
Ancient, damaged Roman scrolls have been deciphered using AI
“I can’t believe it worked!” says Nat Friedman, co-founder of the Vesuvius Challenge, which offered $1m in prizes to anyone who could use artificial intelligence (AI) to decipher papyrus scrolls…
- Technology
- February 6, 2024
- 68 views
Cheap racing drones offer precision warfare at scale
It is human v machine at its simplest. The soldier is crouched under the hull of his battered and immobilised tank. A drone languidly drifts towards him, as if taking…
- Technology
- February 1, 2024
- 74 views
Russia’s bid to return to the Moon comes to an ignominious end
A RASH OF small, fresh craters across the lunar surface testifies to the international rush to return to the Moon by means of robot spacecraft. In April 2019 the gyroscopes…
- Technology
- January 30, 2024
- 78 views
Alzheimer’s disease may, rarely, be transmitted by medical treatment
RESEARCHERS DIVIDE Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia, into two types. “Sporadic” cases usually occur in people over 65. Rarer “familial” ones are associated with a handful of…
- Technology
- January 30, 2024
- 72 views
In rare cases, Alzheimer’s disease may be transmissible
RESEARCHERS DIVIDE Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia, into two types. “Sporadic” cases usually occur in people over 65. Rarer “familial” ones are associated with a handful of…
- Technology
- January 25, 2024
- 103 views
Scientists have found a new kind of magnetic material
“Magnets, how do they work?” asked Insane Clown Posse, a hip-hop duo, in their 2009 song “Miracles”. A flurry of recent papers suggests physicists did not quite have the full…
- Technology
- January 20, 2024
- 90 views
A Nobel prize in physiology for mRNA vaccines
THE COMMITTEES which award the Nobel science prizes (chemistry, physics and physiology or medicine) are hard to second-guess. Last year, for instance, the physiology prize went to Svante Paabo, who…
- Technology
- January 20, 2024
- 82 views
A Nobel prize for electron-watchers
INSIDE ATOMS, things move fast. An electron zooms around a nucleus, changing its position or energy in mere fractions of an attosecond. An attosecond is a billionth of a billionth…
- Technology
- January 19, 2024
- 82 views
A Nobel prize for quantum dottiness
THE QUANTUM world is full of paradoxes. Is light made up of particles or waves? How can entangled particles seemingly influence each other faster than the speed of light? And…
- Technology
- January 18, 2024
- 103 views
Many AI researchers think fakes will become undetectable
Rishi Sunak is Britain’s prime minister. If some advertisements on Facebook can be trusted (which they cannot) he also appears to be flogging get-rich-quick schemes. One such advert shows Mr…
- Technology
- January 17, 2024
- 76 views
We’re hiring a Science and Technology Correspondent
THE ECONOMIST is looking to hire a writer on science and technology, ideally based in London. The writer will mainly be responsible for covering emerging technologies—topics such as artificial intelligence,…
- Technology
- January 16, 2024
- 92 views
Researchers in China create the first healthy, cloned rhesus monkey
PRIMATES RESIST cloning. For some, that is a blessing, since it postpones the awkward day when somebody proposes cloning people. For others it is a problem. Medical researchers would find…
- Technology
- January 11, 2024
- 65 views
2023 was the hottest year ever
image: The Economist Last year was the hottest ever recorded. Data from Copernicus, an EU climate-monitoring service, put the average global temperature for 2023 at 1.48°C above the pre-industrial average.…
- Technology
- January 10, 2024
- 80 views
The Economist’s science and technology internship
THE ECONOMIST is seeking promising journalists and would-be journalists to apply for the 2024 Richard Casement internship. The successful candidate will spend three months with us in London writing about…
- Technology
- January 4, 2024
- 78 views
Vast amounts of the world’s shipping sail unseen
In maritime legend, the Flying Dutchman traversed the world’s oceans undetectable except to the naked eye. Its mysterious voyages have inspired poems, novels, an opera, and, it would seem, an…
- Technology
- December 20, 2023
- 78 views
A new type of jet engine could revive supersonic air travel
Since the 1960s engineers around the world have been fiddling with a novel type of jet called a rotating detonation engine (RDE), but it has never got beyond the experimental…
- Technology
- December 18, 2023
- 82 views
Reviving ancient viruses can help fight modern ones
Humans work hard to dodge viruses. Sick people are quarantined, diseased livestock are killed and fields of infected crops set ablaze. All for good reason. Viruses are everywhere: from snowy…
- Technology
- December 18, 2023
- 184 views
How scientists went to an asteroid to sample the Sun
It was, Dante Lauretta told his audience at an American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco, like seeing an old friend after “seven years [and] a journey of 3bn miles”.…